WordPress and the GNU General Public License: Part Three

Part Three: Support and Derivative Works

The advantage to a proprietary CMS should be that the vendor offers a greater degree of support to the end user. However, web designers should not shy away from offering support for an open source CMS, especially when that CMS is more versatile, easier to use, and more accessible for the end user. In fact, one of the most appealing aspects of WordPress is the incredible amount of free support and add-ons available. Nonetheless, many consultants and companies make a living offering paid support for open source software such as WordPress. A strong support community creates a positive pressure for web businesses and clients, because it makes it both easier and more important for the consultant to bring new and relevant value to the table. It becomes more evident to everyone that clients are willing to pay much more for service and support than they are for the product, which is free.

Although proprietary software has the advantage of being able to fund its own development through sales, WordPress in particular has been able to reap the best of both worlds in the sense that its code receives funding from the various revenue streams of WordPress.com and still receives the benefits of open source code development with each new version

Because the GPL applies to any derivative works as well, this steady improvement happens in a broader sense, to WordPress themes, plugins, and the community at large. The majority of everything developed for WordPress gets contributed back to the community, so designers are pressured to contribute more value in order to sell premium themes, and developers are pressured to create premium plugins that come with better service and more functionality. As long as everyone respects the fundamentals of the GPL, they stand to profit from using this software.

When we really start to think about how the GPL applies to derivative works, the implications get even more interesting. Here is what WordPress says about themes, plugins, and the GPL:

There is some legal grey area regarding what is considered a derivative work, but we feel strongly that plugins and themes are derivative work and thus inherit the GPL license.

This includes premium themes that are bought on sites like Themeforest, Elegant Themes, or Woo Themes. It also includes the code for premium or subscription based plugins, such as Askimet. Askimet is a perfect example of how the GPL works for business: the plugin is free and open source, but the service and the algorithm are proprietary and cost money to access. If another company came along with better service and a better algorithm, they could theoretically use the GPL code created by Askimet, and compete with them. Thus, the pressure is on Askimet to deliver genuine value to the end user.

Themes, Plugins, and DIY Web Design

Themes and frameworks fall under the GPL too. However, some of the “grey area” applies here. Some components of a premium theme may be released under a separate, proprietary license, and therefore restrict the theme’s redistribution as a whole package. Because there has been some lack of clarity on this issue, WordPress asked the Software Freedom Law Center to pick apart their code, and here’s the answer they came back with:

One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Quite often an entire premium theme is released under the GPL and still sells quite well. However, according to the standard interpretation of the law used by WordPress, the distributor does have the right to restrict the use of CSS and images with a proprietary license. (There would therefore be nothing to stop you from buying a premium theme and reselling it or giving it away with your own images and style sheets). In fact, many designers likely “borrow” php code from other themes and frameworks. This is one reason that the design and versatility of both premium and free WordPress themes steadily improves as time goes on.

But wait – there’s even more! What’s truly fascinating is the fact that the more WordPress grows, the more the user experience of the web becomes a function of the GPL. As it becomes easier to improve the design and the back end of things, the user experience improves, and the Worldwide Web becomes a better, more usable environment in general. Just as each new version of WordPress improves based on all of the code developed for previous versions, each new generation of themes and plugins has a bigger pool of GPL code to build upon, and so many do-it-yourself WordPress sites have becomes virtually indistinguishable from professionally designed sites.

We can see a similar trend happening with Drupal and Joomla sites as well. When the GPL is applied to such a widely used CMS, the truth is revealed about where web designers truly offer value, and where they have managed to create perceived value based on a lack of understanding about simple technical factors. For example, many web designers sell the client on on-site SEO services as a part of the website. Although there are some more advanced on-site SEO features that a web designer can offer, a lot of the time these services involve very simple implementation of meta-tags and free services like Google Webmasters Tools or Google Analytics. WordPress has a lot free plugins and support available to take care of these things for you. The service provider is pressured to be clearer about what value his or her SEO services provide. The same rule applies to web services across the board. There is WordPress theme or plugin available to help you with almost anything you might want to add to a website.

Some sites aren’t meant to have a CMS. It’s software that exists so that end users can publish web content without having to code everything. Regardless of whether you use it though, CMS software helps us to see how the GPL is a powerful instrument for social change. The pressures that the GPL transfers through WordPress, Drupal and Joomla to the web design and development industry are creating more honest and valuable business relationships, and a need for better service and support. CMS software helps us to clearly see the difference between freedom and free beer.

WordPress and the GNU General Public License: Part Two

Part Two: Proprietary vs. Open Source

There are many possible advantages to using no CMS, but in my opinion, there are almost always zero advantages to using a proprietary CMS other than perhaps the additional support one should receive from the vendor. Rarely does a proprietary CMS actually offer better functionality that WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. I believe that it only makes sense to use a CMS if it has been released under an open source license such as the GNU General Public License. Here’s why:

In the world of software, a proprietary license means you don’t actually own the software, and you are only allowed to use it under certain conditions specified by the licensee. These conditions may be very reasonable – such as, “you are not allowed to make copies of this commercial software and then distribute it for free.” However, a proprietary software license does not have to abide by any standards of what you or I may consider “reasonable.” If you don’t fully understand the license of software you are using, the limitations you experience could be much greater than you ever anticipated.

In the case of a proprietary CMS, the licensee might stipulate that the software can only be installed or used on specific servers – or even that the user of the CMS grants a provisional license to the licensee on all content uploaded using the software. If your web designer is using a proprietary CMS, make sure that you fully understand the license under which you are using this software.

It’s possible that you don’t even receive a license of your own, and are only “borrowing” the white-label license granted to your web designer by the software developer. Whatever the case, if the license is proprietary, you’re not only married to your CMS, but also to your vendor. Without your relationship with the vendor, you cannot access the back end of your site for any content modifications or additions. If anything goes wrong in that relationship, you might even have to redesign everything from scratch because the complications of moving everything over to a new CMS prove too great.

Where a proprietary license can impede the end user’s usage and access to support, an open source license does the exact opposite, allowing anyone to distribute and modify the software, thereby empowering the end user with more options in terms of usability. The GPL does even more than this – it also requires anyone who distributes software derived from GPL code to do so under the GPL. For our purposes, this peculiarity of the license requires some attention.

Freedom vs. Free Beer

We often assume that when people say “free” they are talking about cost because in a superficial sense, this meaning of the word has greater cultural relevance to us. However, we are prone to forget that just because something is offered to us “gratis,” or free of charge, that doesn’t mean that it is offered “libre,” or without restrictions on freedom. Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, and author of the GPL, has famously said, “Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.”

Open source software often becomes popular because of its “free beer” aspect. For example, when you buy a PC with Windows, it probably has “free beer” Internet Explorer on it. If this browser does everything you want it to do, you might simply use it without worrying about the proprietary license it is released under. However, if you discover that Internet Explorer has security and functionality flaws that limit your ability to browse the web, you might download another “free beer” option such as Mozilla Firefox. It might not even cross your mind that the two programs have been offered to you gratis for completely different reasons. The only thing that matters is which one works better.

When we consider a CMS like WordPress, we can see how it is freedom, not just free beer, which has caused this software to become so popular and powerful. On the most superficial level, the GPL means that there are no strings attached to your usage of WordPress, and a site that works on one installation of WordPress works on another. If you administer the site and back everything up, you don’t have to be married to any web designer or vendor, and nobody owns the site besides you. On a deeper level, however, this freedom applies to the updates and support you receive for your site, any derivative works of WordPress, such as themes and plugins, and a whole slew of other considerations.

READ MORE IN PART THREE

WordPress and the GNU General Public License: Part One

Part One: Why use a CMS?

There are nearly 75 million WordPress sites live on the web. That’s nearly 16.5% of all websites. Drupal and Joomla are the second and third most popular content management systems, meaning that at least 21.4% of websites now run using a CMS released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The impact of this shift in the world of web design and development towards free software has gone largely unappreciated. With the GPL as the new standard in content management systems, a lot of web designers are hesitant to endorse the use of this software. Although there are many reasons for this, the main ones seem to be an uneasiness surrounding open source code, and hesitation to adopt new practices to reflect the changing environment.

I’m going to assume that some of you probably don’t know a lot about CMS software, or about the GPL. For those of you who are already familiar with these things, a brief rundown of them will help to clarify why I think WordPress is so important and such a great utility.

Most sites don’t use a CMS, but there are many benefits to using one. From the perspective of the end user, a CMS enables you and your staff to easily make substantial modifications to your website without coding or contracting a web designer. From the perspective of a web designer, a CMS can be sold or included as “added value” that also makes your job easier. It eliminates the need to offer constant support for basic changes to the site content. At the same time, the client may pay residuals for support and updates, meaning you can still bring in revenue without having to do nearly as much work. Good CMS software is a “win-win” for everyone.

However, there are still many reasons that most sites don’t use a CMS. For one thing, simply using raw code without the interference of a CMS allows you greater control over the site’s structure and functionality. If you use a CMS, you are effectively married to any limitations it may have. A good CMS will make most tasks easier, but they do sometimes complicate things if you want to implement a more advanced site feature.

Another downside of a CMS is that accessing and modifying code may be simpler without one. WordPress, for example, uses PHP, which is a fairly advanced scripting language to begin with. What’s more, the PHP code in a WordPress site makes several calls to unique WordPress functions, meaning that you also have to learn how WordPress works if you want to edit PHP code for it. If you need to keep very close tabs on the back-end structure of your site, and you don’t know a lot about PHP, but do have at least an intermediate knowledge of CSS, HTML and JavaScript, then WordPress might not be for you. Every CMS has some limitations, and the decision to use one always means a trade-off for back-end usability.

READ MORE IN PART TWO

Write On! YouTube Channel

Have a look at how effectively you can make promotional YouTube videos using nothing more than a laptop webcam!

http://www.youtube.com/writeonforum

Building a Forum

I’ve been a member or moderator on many internet forums. I’ve recently started up a few writing forums and learned some lessons about what makes a forum successful. They are a great way to generate massive amounts of content, and if you can create an active and engaging forum on your site that’s relevant to your site, it means a following that can help you establish authority in your niche, a steady stream of traffic, and good SEO.

My favourite forum software is phpBB 3.0.10. Not only is it free and open source, it’s arguably the most versatile forum software out there. There are countless plugins for karma, SEO, social media, and just about anything else you can imagine doing with a forum. There are limitless skins to choose from, and it’s easy to easy to create something highly customized to your needs.

You can easily download the latest version of phpBB and install it on your server or hosting provider. You can also sign up for a pre-installed forum hosting service like prophpbb.com. The disadvantage to a pre-installed hosting service is that you can’t add your own plug-ins and such, and to stay with the free plan you have to go with a subdomain (like forumname.prophpbb.com). It’s still great software, and prophpbb.com is a good servic. But it doesn’t have all of the functionality forum users usually like to have.

For our new writing forum, we decided to go with Proboards for its sheer simplicity. It has most of the features that forum users usually want, and it’s fairly easy to set up a respectable looking skin and attract members. It’s not phpBB, but it’s the best we could find in terms of free forum hosting. We’ve been growing by about 2 members per day by using social media and social bookmarking. Now we’ve set up a YouTube channel to promote the site, and this seems to be a very effective tool as well.

There seems to be a snowball effect. Every member brings two or three more members, and each spreads good word of mouth about the forum. We make sure to post lots of quality content on the site, and we encourage other members to do the same. By creating something of value, and letting everyone see some of that value, we seem to fill a need for them. I’m looking forward to watching the forum grow and tracking my successes in promoting it.

Twitter Tools I’ve Been Using

The more time you spend fiddling around with social media, the more you realize how time consuming and complicated these digital environments can be. Twitter can be especially overwhelming. When I first set up my Twitter account about a year ago, I had no idea where to start. It took several conversations with social media experts and a ton of reading just to get me started. Now I’ve got an idea of how to use Twitter, but I’m still trying to find the time and energy to fully turn it to my advantage. There are a few tools I’ve discovered that are starting to make the task easier.

 

1. Crowdbooster

 

From what I understand, Crowdbooster does a lot of the same things as Hootsuite, but limits its functionality to Facebook and Twitter. I have heard Crowdbooster’s metrics are a bit more useful, but I can’t say for sure because I haven’t used Hootsuite.

 

Aside from letting you schedule tweets, Crowdbooster gives you analytics on how your tweets are doing, important interactions that you should be aware of, and how your following is growing. My favourite thing about Crowdbooster’s analytics, though, is that it analyzes your following and suggests optimal times for you to schedule tweets (or posts) based on when your followers are online. This is especially useful for constructing editorial calendars for your blog and other content.

 

2. Listorious

 

For some reason, it’s not easy to navigate and discover lists on Twitter. In fact there’s nothing in place that would allow you to do so. You just have to visit profiles and discover the lists that each individual belongs to. This is time consuming and doesn’t allow you to target people properly for prospecting.

 

Never fear, listorious is here. Listorious makes it easy to search for lists by keyword, or to navigate them by category. If I’m looking for web designers, I can head over to listorious, find a list of them, and select the ones I want to follow. This makes it a lot easier to follow the people you should be following and cultivate the most beneficial types of interactions.

 

3. Tweepi

 

I recently hit my following limit. It was quite a shock when it happened, but I guess I was being a bit aggressive with my Twitter activity. I didn’t know that Twitter limits the number of followers you can have based on various factors of your account. It makes a lot of sense. It limits spam and encourages you to be selective about who you follow. But now I found myself in the odd position of having to unfollow people in order to maximize the effectiveness of my account. Figuring out who doesn’t make the cut can be a challenge.

 

There are some obvious ones, but when it comes down to it, Tweepi can help you decide who to purge from your “following” list. It shows you who isn’t following back, who is inactive, who has the least followers, as well as many other useful metrics, all together in a convenient, sortable list. Tweepi also allows you to do some other things like force people to unfollow you, reciprocate their mentions, and add them to lists. These are all things that you can do on Twitter, but Tweepi’s interface makes it easy to manage your following.

 

These are just a few of the tools out there, but I’ve found them to be immensely useful. It’s funny that the more I use Twitter, the more time I spend on other sites that manage my Twitter account. There is a huge place for versatile social media aggregators and tools in today’s web environment. They allow you to be much more strategic about your social media activity.

Brief Update

I’ve been so bust that I haven’t had a chance to update my blog in several weeks. I’ve been working on content for several websites, and meeting with many clients and connections to establish some working relationships. Over the next several weeks, I do have some articles to roll out, so anyone who has been following along can expect some exciting updates in the near future.